Writing on travel, food, and adventure during my time living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and beyond.

Cambodia

My dear friends Hailey and Tanya came to visit me in Cambodia for five nights. Their experience here was much different from most. We started in Phnom Penh, but then decided on a whim to visit the eco-tourism site Chi-Phat, located in the foothills of the Cardamom Mountains, in Koh Kong province.

First we started with a five-hour bus ride to Koh Kong from Phnom Penh. We got off at the second major bridge, an area called Andoung Tuek, and then took a small boat for two hours up the river “Preak Phiphot” . . . it was loud, slow, but beautiful.

Once we arrived at the village, we enjoyed a slower pace of life than we expected. We stayed in a home stay the first night, and a guest house the second night. Like other villages in Cambodia, the homes are mostly made of wood, elevated, and the properties are guarded by dogs, the occasional cat, and plenty of chicken. The dog fights at night are particularly loud and distracting, but complementary to some of the heaviest rains I’ve encountered in Cambodia.

The village is located on several roads, with the main road pictured below, the artery of the town. This road extends for about 7 kilometers and then narrows and turns into small paths that lead to even smaller communities of farmers and forest people.

While we did not see much wildlife, there were plenty of bulls that kept our attention. Luckily they were all tied up and very safe. I loved the contrast of the gray skin/hair with the greens of the forest.

As people who have traveled in Post-Colonial Southeast Asia know, there are some communities that love foreigners and non-locals, and some that have uncertainty and even disdain for them. Like anywhere else, I suppose. The villagers of Chi Phat were significantly all over the board. Many of them were friendly–saying “Hello” and “Bye Bye” as we passed on our bicycles. Many of them looked at us and scowled. Regardless, the community of people in this area was very active. From badminton to bubble blowing, the children seemed to have fun, and the adults seemed to spend as much time enjoying leisure activities as going to work in their farms or on the river.

We arrived in the afternoon on the first day, which we spent resting and walking around the village. There isn’t that much to “do” in Chi Phat itself, aside from eating Cambodian food and hanging out with locals who probably will show you their baby a billion times and try to get them to wave at you. The real joy of Chi Phat is being near so many great outdoor features. We spent our second day biking to the Omalu waterfall, about 14 kilometers one way outside of town. I hadn’t gone mountain biking since I was a kid, so this was very nostalgic (and super fun) for me.

At the waterfall, we were completely drenched in sweat. I took off my clothes to go swimming and moments later a bright blue butterfly managed to find my salty sock and indulge. The butterfly was so fiendishly affixed to its consumption that it basically let me stroke its wings. I had to shake the sock almost violently to get the butterfly to go away so I could put it back on my foot!

Omalu waterfall is a huge feature on this little river outside of the village. Though we couldn’t find a way to swim in the main area, we did swim just above it. I had to use Photoshop in the picture below because the lighting was so bad, so it obviously looks edited.

The Chi Phat forests are quite beautiful and had some amazingly obscure trees I had never seen before, like this one, which almost looks cancerous in its bulbous nature.

Our final moments at Chi Phat were on a little ferry that crossed from one side of the river to the other, and could hold one car or maybe half a dozen motos. This picture demonstrates how much I’ve physically aged in the past year.

After getting across the river, we took a moto taxi back to the main high way to get picked up by a bus to go back to Phnom Penh. It was beautiful Koh Kong provincial scenery, and perhaps one of my favorite landscapes in Cambodia, right there at the bottom of those Cardamoms.

All in all, I would recommend anyone visit Chi Phat, though the space itself will feel meditative and almost small in terms of activities and excitement. That might be its greatest charm as a way to escape the pressures of modern society that plague most of Cambodia.

I came to Cambodia for a summer to do work. Sometimes I forget this. Sometimes people don’t realize it. Sometimes people say: you’re on holiday, why aren’t you acting like it? To which I reply with exhaustion and/or fatigue and/or confusion, for I have been working, and I continue to work, and I continue to explore what I’ve come here for.

The job: working for the Wildlife Conservation Society. The position: working as the Information Management Specialist. Similar to my work for Open Development Cambodia, except this time with a touch more confidence, a bit more experience, and two lovely sidekicks to keep me even-keeled during my journey.

The opening of this position was unique and intense: working under significant leadership/supervision within the WCS, it was determined that I help to hire two Cambodian interns. How? Find out where to advertise, get the job posting circulating, and then interview them. I had only a little bit of interview experience under my belt, from the last time I was in Cambodia. But so be it: the show had to go on! With the help of the Phnom Penh office’s lovely admin, and some support for the interviews from two other staff, we hired two young women who started working abruptly (and continue to this day). All told, there were six interviews, four of which I conducted alone.

The work has been mostly analysis at this point. The Phnom Penh office, where I’m based, has an internal library of a couple thousand books (we actually haven’t counted them straight through, as we are still weeding the collection). There are an uncountable body of digital documents on hard drives and servers as well. The Phnom Penh office is setup with a Synology server, and the organization just implemented Google Drive, which has been fairly troublesome to work with, as the bandwidth on the local WiFi system cannot handle the eight or so people using Google Drive simultaneously, and not many people even know how to use it, and individuals are using it on both Mac and PC.

We’ve gotten the main library under control. A lot of the documents were damaged (from age and general decay, or from termites) and have to be scanned so we can throw them out. Weeding is challenging. Many of the documents are absolutely not in any capacity available online because they are very old, and when we can only find the catalog record or a broken hyperlink, it’s more than frustrating. We have been keeping records of what we get rid of, if we cannot find digital replacements. The potential to seek out these documents from other NGOs exists, though I’m not sure we will actually get to do that investigative work.

The interns have been mostly helping with organization and scanning. They are not by any means librarians or trained in information management, but they seem to enjoy that. I try and compensate them (above their monetary pay) with cupcakes and jokes. It usually works to break the monotony. Additionally they’ve been on data retrieval missions and in the near future will be helping other team members with photography classification, and metadata enhancement for some indexes that were created by staff for previous projects.

One of the joys of working for an NGO that operates mostly out of the field is being able to go out in the field for different events and functions, similar to a couple of my experiences working for ODC. In the picture above, I am visiting the release event of the Royal Turtle in Sre Ambel. Seeing the work that the information within this organization does so well to capture, seeing it in real time, provides a lot of significance to a job that could be mostly PDFs and wiping away dust.

The NGO is in the field and I already got to visit the one non-Phnom Penh office I will be helping out in: Seima. Seima, located in Mondulkiri Province, is a protected forest that is at risk from deforestation/land development, as well as illegal logging of rare trees. Seima has a plethora of diverse wildlife, including gibbons and doucs (which I saw during my visit). It also apparently has more types of hummingbirds in one space than any other forest in the world (21 was the count).

When I was a graduate student a couple of years ago, I actually fantasized about going out into the jungle in search of rare documents. I’m not exactly doing that, but I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to consider this short-term gig one of “jungle librarianship” proportions. The office in Seima literally sits right on the edge of a dense forest. Whether or not it’s officially a jungle or not is aside the point, but it’s humid, and the creatures that fill the forest are wild and unlike any I’ve ever seen (especially the insects).

Fortunately my brief trip this one time for two days was not the only trip I will take there, and I will be able to go back with my interns-cum-translators, to work there again. Doing what, you might ask? Transforming the Research Center, which needs some deep cleaning, organizing, and general improvements, and capacity-building with the Cambodian staff who are responsible for heaps of information.

So far, my experience working with the WCS has been one of independence and intensity. I have been responsible for a lot, and the expectations are high. It’s easy to “go up” in organization here because the offices have been disorganized for so long. Just being around and shuffling papers has been a symbolic act of change and optimization that (I think) most people at the organization, Cambodian and Barang, both understand I’m around to provide support and assistance where needed, though nobody really know what the image of that is going to be at the very end, and that’s probably a good thing, because it means we are all open minded and working together to achieve what will be a better future for the internal information landscape.

I realize I haven’t provided a lot of details about this position: types of documents, file formats, technologies, etc., and content related specifics. It’s been hard to write about this because there is so much I can say. I think I will contribute more details in the future, if things appear like they are getting settled down around here. Which they probably won’t, because Rath and Phalkun (the interns) keep me on my toes, and Simon and Alex and Sarah and Matt and Kez (the WCS staff) keep me on my toes, and Heng and Claire (the other interns) keep me on my toes, and Veng and Solita and Pheap (the IT and Admin team) keep me on my toes, and all the other people I’ve worked with throughout the organization . . . everyone has been enormously fun to work with, and yet the entire process has been one of overload. Jeff, who is helping with REDD and GIS and the IT infrastructure here (he’s been here since last year) has been an amazing support, but I think he can see me slowly getting more and more burnt out. Maybe it will happen. It probably will. But this is Cambodia. Burnout happens, and we move on, go forth, drink coconut smoothies, and enjoy the rush.

Koh Dach hasn’t appeared to to change in any significant ways since I was there last year. But it remains a strange, well-traveled, well-visited spot just outside of the city where the breeze is strong and the fruit is cheap, and the roads are endlessly waiting. There’s even a significant lack of restaurants on both the main island, and Koh Chbhal, or “Head Island” (which sticks out of Silk Island like some tumorous growth). JESUS SAVES still sits in a huge banner at the top of the ramp leading onto the island. There is still a lot of chaos and dust and family dogs roaming around. Everything is at one with the silkiness of the island.

It’s still easier than ever to get over to the island. Just drive about 20 minutes outside of the city, wait for the regularly-occurring ferry to arrive, and wait for everyone to load up. The ride across the Mekong is only fifteen minutes or so, which is just enough time to get pictures and not feel uncomfortable in waiting.

One of the two ferries is multi-level.

All manner of vehicles board the boat to go to the other side.

Our fearless captain, who did not care one bit for my picture-taking.

It had been a while since Yenda, my friend who graciously drove me and the others (Pinkie, Nicole, and Ema) from the center of the city to the island, had visited. For him, Silk Island is a source of nostalgia. From the random plants (vegetable, fruit-bearing, and otherwise), to the style of houses, Silk Island was a magnificently filled with stories and a sense of living memory. We joined along, ate watermelon, took photos, and coasted through the breeze and the dust.

View of the Mekong

Unfortunately it was very hot and we had some form (presumably) of fatigue. Sun stroke, perhaps? It was brutalizing and returning to the aircon of the car was a welcome activity. We cruised the island with no intentions other than general exploration. We saw families spending their Sunday seated together, traditional poses and huge sets of eyes upon us on the street as we cruised by, seeing pot holes, examining vegetation.

Even the dog looked hotter than us.

A little boy on his big bicycle.

Silk Island had its moments of decay.

The Cambodian equivalent of bubble wrap.

Nicole eats some watermelon. 1,000 riel for a whole melon.

No trip to Koh Dach is complete without a visit to the tourist beach at the northern point. Having been there before, I was well expecting the swaths of trash and the local tourists who spent their time getting away from the city–or other parts of the island. The heat kept us from any relaxation, however.

A man fishing with a net near a rent-able covered platform.

A woman talks on her phone next to an inner tube, while the fairly disgusting trash landscape sits in the distance.

Regardless of the landscape, there was a lot of beauty to see here. Mostly in the youths who flocked around and played in the sun, the river sparkling nearby.

We were (are) a troupe of adventurers but seeking what?

Yenda fought me, in the shadows.

Despite its close proximity to the city, Silk Island often felt like being back on the coast, where the carefree, stressless attitude sank into the corners.

Following our visit to the beach, we slowly headed back to the ferry and went on with our day, visiting the Sokha Hotel (just completed, and gloriously empty), and other nearby destinations, including some good seafood. It was an enjoyable adventure. I do have some other pictures but they are not uploading correctly. I will try and upload them through another network soon. And videos: be prepared for some glorious, glorious videos of streetscapes and nightlife.

I have been here now nearly one week. Phnom Penh’s streets are still dusty, still cracked, and still beautiful. The motos buzz by with their rattling, the tuk tuks not far behind. The heat is everywhere, is upon everything.

What will it take to get to the ATM?

I live in a building that is under renovation. The manager of the building, a man named Roshan, lives across the hall from me, with his friend, another man, both from northern India. They are friendly. There is no one else in the building, which stands in the center of the Duan Penh neighborhood. The building is four stories high and will have 8 apartments once it is completed. I am the first one. I am on the ground floor, but will be moving to the top floor soon, where there will be breeze. There is a Cambodian restaurant called Meng Meng next to my building. Early in the morning the charcoal seeps through the window where I sleep and makes me ill, gives me a headache. It is the same type of headache as when you wake up from being next to a campfire the night before. It will be good to move to the top floor. Even though it will be higher and harder to get to at the end of a long day, it will be worth it, to be away from the charcoal. I will continue to pay $200 per month, and it will include WiFi and the occassional cleaning from Roshan’s friend, who is apparently the de facto house cleaner.

The sun goes down behind the Royal Palace

I write this sitting in My Friends Cafe eating a raisin pastry while a wedding blasts music from across the street. The pastry is underdone despite the place being owned and run by a French man and his Cambodian wife. I will not complain. It is still tasty, even in its doughy state. I drink an Americano with ice and milk, probably overpriced, but I don’t care, I will indulge. Cambodia, for the visitor, tourist or worker, is still cheaper, even if the prices are getting more and more inflated with every day. Having spent time in Vietnam, now, it’s so easy to see how ridiculously expensive things in Cambodia have become. Whereas most snacks in southern Vietnam cost between 50 cents and a dollar, here you can expect to always pay more than a dollar–even when the food is worse. I was at a Vietnamese restaurant getting a Vietnamese coffee for a dollar fifty the other day, and looked at the food menu: $7.5 for certain Vietnamese dishes. Seriously? How does the market get this way? Is this what the “middle class” of sellouts and the corrupted buy? Or is it marketed toward tourists? How long will an empty restaurant like that, with so many staff, stay open? Who will be happy? The Vietnamese coffee was good, by the way.

More uncanny clouds (from Wat Botum Park)

I start work in 45 minutes. I am working for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). I am based in their Phnom Penh office. I am going to be working at one of their sites, Keo Seima, a protected forest, soon. My first visit will be in a week and a half–arguably one of the greatest adventures I will have encountered as a solo traveler in Cambodia.

A new coffee seller (this wasn’t here during my first time in Cambodia)

I stir in liquid sugar. I look at the tile floors. I see the breeze upon the ferns outside.

The work itself is quite difficult, quite challenging. It is not over my head but nearly so, a situation where one has to stand on their toes to keep from drowning. I have seen many different jobs with many different responsibilities in my life. This 8-week information management contract might be the most independent I have been in a role, despite there being a significant support network within the organization. Cambodian rules still apply: I have to get on everyone’s side. I am still the outsider.

Natasha will be coming at the end of the month, if she can raise money. It is so hard to be anything for anyone. From personal life to work life to romantic life. I struggle. I look at the sky and wish for it to rain, to cause me some constraint, to relinquish its long arms of endless heat. I know everything will work. I know everything will be significant. I know everything will be. I sit and wonder how I can share this place. I have shared it before. With loves, with friends, with strangers. I have taken people and shown them. My body, hot, knows it can happen again, but where is the energy I had two years ago? Where is the spark? Where is my engine, my internal machine, to keep pushing me forward?

With my friend and old coworker Pinkie, at Motor Cafe

I have done an okay job meeting friends from my previous time here. I have met with James whose photography once inspired me. I have met with Pinkie and KC, who were some of my closest friends. I have met with Antoine for a dip at the Teahouse pool next to my apartment. I have met with Tana, for an exchange of gifts. I have met with Sokunthea, my previous collaborator. I have met with Scott and Warren, my current collaborators. There are many friends left to see, but I have so many weeks left to see everyone.

As I continue to write here, I will try and focus on new aspects of life in Phnom Penh that I hadn’t thought of before. I certainly have stared to think in many new ways about what it’s like to live here, especially short term, especially with a pre-established relationship to the city, and my romantic relationship in Seattle. Before I arrived, I had many questions about how I would spend my time here. I divided time between: work, friends, travel, photography, reading, and watching movies. I brought too many books. I brought too many movies. I have to take a course while I am here, as well. Life is packed, taxing, challenging. Busy. Some people don’t understand this. But I don’t need them to. I will live my life with the gains and the losses. There will be beauty, creation, suffering, destruction. Let us think of accountability.

I hardly know who is still tracking this blog, but I have good news! I happened to luck out on my schedule this year, and on June 22 I will be boarding a plane in Seattle and heading to Ho Chi Minh City, where I will be spending six nights (technically a few in Dalat), and then heading back to Cambodia for the summer break.

How did this happen? It starts with being a librarian. As I work for two community colleges (North Seattle College (NSC) and Lake Washington Institute of Technology (LWTech)), I am working on the quarter-based system. I am technically a librarian at the latter, and their contract for me, a part time contract that will be renewed in the fall, does not cover summer quarter. North Seattle College’s contract does cover summer, but the summer quarter is incredibly limited. I ended up getting my good friend Molly Mac to temporarily (and potentially permanently) take over the North gig and my amazing room mate is letting me keep all my stuff in my apartment at a very small rate. And so I’m off to ‘Bodia for a few months until I resume work at LWTech!

Once in Cambodia, I will have a lot of catching up to do. It should be easy from my relatively-centralized apartment in the Duan Penh area of Phnom Penh, near the TeaHouse Asian Urban Resort:

I look forward to bringing this blog back to sharing everything that is going on with my life. I will have a job, I will reconvene with old friends, hopefully meet new friends, and, of course, enjoy my fair share of swimming pools. Also, it will be monsoon season, which will be a drastic (and welcome) change from the relative mild heat of the Pacific Northwest. Here are some things I will be doing:

Spending time meeting up with my dear friend Dede in HCMC.

Exploring Dalat for the first time.

Meeting up with all my old friends who are still in Phnom Penh.

Working an 8-week information management contract in Phnom Penh (and hopefully a field office in Mondulkiri) for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Getting back into the vibe of going to pools, enjoying fresh food, and feeling the pulsations of air conditioning, and watching the streets flood and the lightning flicker on the horizon.

Enjoying the return of my American friend Tanya and the first visit of my American friend Hailey in late August/early September.

Potentially traveling throughout Laos with some good friends in September before heading back to the USA!

When will I return? I’m scheduled to fly back on the 26th, to start work on the 28th. Let’s hope everything goes to plan!

As for updates along the way, I plan on using this blog for my primary means of documenting my travels, work, and pictures. However, I am now a contributing writer for Queen Mob’s, and plan on writing about pools and weekend adventures there. I will also be using my Cambodian-based Twitter account for relevant tweeting. If you are in Cambodia and want to meet with me, send me a message to my email, or post on Facebook, or simply comment on this post and I’ll get back to you soon!

I’m safely back in Seattle, USA. White clouds loom over me thickly. Green trees are in every corner. The air is brisk and biting. I have to wear layers. I have to squint to see through the brightness. There is no sweat. There is noise, lots of noise, in the restaurants and bars. There is space and quiet outside. The roads are smooth. The hills are steep. The cars are many, and they are orderly. It stays light out until 9 or 9:30 at night.

It has been a difficult transition back to this town, this place I called home for three years. In many ways, I sincerely and severely miss Phnom Penh. I miss the heat, I miss the crowds, the busy streets, the regular cycles of day and night. I miss the dust. I miss the dirty streets. I miss the constant movement, the constant activity. In some ways, I miss the lack of shade and the unbearable lightness of urban sunlight. I miss the friends I knew, and the many faces I didn’t. I miss the fruit and the meat and the fish and the strange vegetables. Obviously I miss the cheap food and the cheap cost of living.

But here I am under the many conveniences of American life. I’m once again back in the landscape of the fancy, where I can get Starbucks 5 minutes from every location, where I can get in a friend’s car and just drive. There’s freedom here. But there’s so much more, so much more uncertainty.

When you first live abroad, you think, “Wow, there are all of these things I took for granted where I come from.” You’re not only surrounded by the perspectives of the majority (in my case, the Cambodians), but also the perspectives of all the other minorities–Australians, Europeans, South Americans, Canadians, other Asians–and everything comes together into a new range of perspectives, a new melting pot, that is absolutely fantastic as it is horrifying. The “island” of your homeland, of your home country, becomes one that is fantastically strange. “Oh, wow, Americans are loud, and we use credit cards to buy almost everything” are a couple statements you might make when you get into the superficial contrasts in culture.

When you return home, you start to see the deeper differences in the world around you. You start to project everything you came to value in the foreign experience onto everything that surrounds your homeland. You start to realize the gaps between the two. You start to think about what was missing from your previous life. In Cambodia, for example, collectivity and community and individual sacrifice is normal under professional, family, and personal contexts. There is a degree of “giving” that is unmatched by many people in many subcultures of America. Though there are certainly “giving” people here, and very, very kind people, that they are not the norm makes them stand out, sure, but makes them seem flanked by the majority ideology in a landscape of supreme individualism and, to be drastic, selfishness.

Even the language of “I” (using “I statements”) was completely different over there. Among Westerners and Cambodians alike, talking in conversations was normally inverted. Statements involved commenting on others before commenting on yourself. The “you” statement (“You actually talked to him?”) versus the “I” statement (“I can’t believe you talked to him”) seems simple but is foundationally different, and of course I grew completely self-conscious of my own linguistic behavior and adjusted accordingly. And since being back I’ve constantly noticed the self-centrism in communications. It’s a good thing, because it means I can continue to make myself less self in an attempt to translate my previous comforts of community into the communities I previously known.

There is something maddening about the face of despair and disease in the USA that I don’t remember “seeing” as clearly in Cambodia. From the drunks standing in and around bars, to those pour souls screaming on the streets, to the silent, defaced individuals working at the cafes, there is a distance between individuals here that unnerves me. Some of these elements of mental health and social behavior are greater in Seattle than other areas of the country, I realize that, and it’s hard to make blanket/generalized statements, but they are visually noticeable and, in many cases, difficult to deal with. I’m sure most of my friends in Cambodia, and myself too, had extreme disparities in mental health, but there was a general concern for happiness and connectivity, even desperately, but still normal-seeming, that kept me and my crew together in an act of energy, trust, and reliance. Did that exist for me in Seattle, before? Perhaps it simply wasn’t as obvious to see, even if it did exist. Certain illuminations occur when we least expect them, make us turn over stones and reflect on previously-hidden realities of life.

Cold in the night, it’s been a bit hard, clutching my blankets, to not think of the smiling faces of those who were in my life, both temporarily and consistently, during my time in Cambodia. Penhleak, Kakrona, Yenda, Daen, Andrea, Stephanie, Antoine, Jialing, Eitan, Kristina, Borey, Sok Lak, Vongseng, Sros, Linda, Heng, Khiang, Kara, Tana, Nary, Sokunthea, Ratana, Huy Eng, Saren, Naro, Seila, Try, Emanuel, Eric, Terry, Margaret, Kolap, Wanna, Dana, Chheangly, Chakriya, James, Phally, Soknea, Sok, and all the others, these were the people who allowed me to rediscover myself by leaving myself and entering their lives. The invitations were gradual and amazing. And unforgettable.

It’s difficult thinking about how experiences are different out here. It’s only been 48 hours and I’m not working and I’m living in a moment-to-moment space. I can’t imagine how it will be interacting with my family when I go back home, or how I will interact in working environments, but one of my major skills I’ve learned has been patience. There is so much patience required to switch from the Western to the Cambodian way of life: from tasks at work to meeting up with friends to enjoying a meal. There’s a reason lunch breaks are two hours long rather than 30 minutes. There’s a reason no one expects people to be exactly on time in any given circumstance, for a date or for a casual meeting. So many factors go into “barriers,” where barrier shouldn’t be considered a negative, but rather simply a push and pull keeping people from being so abrupt, so rigid in their daily lives. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve already faced difficulties with impatience, with promptness. I foresee them continuing.

Over the next five days I’ll be perusing Seattle and, when I can, posting new thoughts about new differences I’ve encountered. Then I’ll be in Maine, where my goal will be to write significantly about my many friendships and interactions in Cambodia. I hope to write something, a long essay, or book, that can accurately illustrate what life in Cambodia is like today, something most people probably haven’t a clue about. (I already had to deal with more than two Pol Pot references since being back, which confirms said suspicions.) After a month in Maine, I’ll be driving across the country. All of these activities are so starkly different from my life in Cambodia that I hope they don’t overshadow the past 9 months completely. And yet, Cambodia instilled a sense of humbleness, sincerity, joy, and compassion within me that I don’t imagine will be easy to shrug off anytime soon.

Here is the first in what I hope is a series of posts on my time in Cambodia. I will be writing a final poem and some additional comments tomorrow, during my last day in the Kingdom of Wonder.

Clutching the bag

like the next corner

could be your next life.

Final days, final hours, final minutes, final moments. I’ve been in Cambodia for around eight and a half months and tomorrow at midnight I return back to the United States of America, from whence I came, from the last life I knew. And yet it will never be the last life, the same life, as Cambodia has provided so much insight, expanded me perspective gradually, fundamentally, impeccably. I will miss Cambodia and what it has taught me and what I have found as a new home, a new lifestyle, a new place of wonder in a Kingdom of Wonder.

I ache thinking about the rising sun

and how it will never be as hot

my skin will never shimmer this way.

I will miss the people most of all. The fantastic people who are all doing amazing things here. I will miss the writers, the teachers, the librarians, the artists, the psychologists, the developers, the dancers, and so on and so on. I will miss the opportunity to so easily look into the minds and worlds of so many different types of people. Through work, through volunteering, through a commitment to creativity, I have seen in my life a place filled with so much life, so much purpose, so much inquiry. Contrastingly different from previous states of nihilism and the annals of the voids of pretention I knew before, Cambodia has given me a glimmer of insight into a space where the have-nots have so much to find, care for, and explore.

Kick, push, kick, push.

The first time navigating the world of motos

on a single speed bicycle.

Risks. I will miss the risks. I will miss swerving out into traffic and nearly getting run over by the motorbikes and the SUVs and all manner of other crazed traffic that dominates the landscape. Risks. I will miss booking my schedule full with exhausting, potentially-heartbreaking meetings, where my experience and inexperience is not enough to find the answers to the problems I encounter. I will miss exploring and trying anyway. I will miss going into situations without the proper foundational knowledge and taking the risk that I can still make impact.

Judging from that pothole,

there has recently been a lot of rain,

and yet the sky is clear.

Cambodia might as well be labeled “land of uncertainty.” You can find surprises anywhere, but there is a particularly staggering degree of uncertainty and discovery here that never gets old, that continues to astound no matter where you are. I will miss it. I will miss it in its beautiful poetry. This poetic world we float through, new smells, new fumes, incredible vibrations and incredible patterns of images. Every moment, whether I was in the comfort of my room, enjoying conversations over beers or coffee with friends, or out traveling the dusty streets, I found myself being delightfully reminded that I could know nothing. For me, I never created a structure, a pretense that “order exists.” Despite my own relatively stable daily existence, I normalized the strange, the unknown, and the lack of patterns over the patterns themselves, in an attempt to unravel the mysteries surrounding me. Did it help to always be on the edge of my seat, become as shocked as often as possible?

There is no shade and so you will burn

but you will stop naysaying the flames.

You will grow to love the discomfort.

I have always felt some anxiety in Cambodia. Some degree of fear has touched me on a daily basis. From conversations to bargaining to sickness to my interpretations of the world around me to the potential to get robbed, even, my nerves grew startled and uncomfortable living here. But in many ways, these defense mechanisms slowly became tolerable, fine. I stopped losing sleep over it. But part of the love for Cambodia is in the fear. Because, like so many who have visited other places before me can attest, the idea of exotic can be found in the differences between what you know and are used to, and what you don’t know and might never fully know because, well, you’re always translating. As with language, eventually there is a point where you stop translating and your understanding is natural, internalized and smooth; however, as I have never learned a second language fluently, I cannot say anything more than this assumption. I can, however, comment that life did get easier, and many elements of daily life slowly became unconscious, slowly stopped invading me on a meta-analytical level. I stopped giving a damn about being cut off in traffic. I stopped worrying about getting sick when eating street food. I stopped caring so much about how much that tuk tuk ride would cost. I even stopped freaking out about money problems. Life slowly became “Cambodian” to me.

You will be as the statues are:

centered and observed,

though still, filled with joy and aging.

I think a lot of foreign people like Cambodia because you can be quite individual here. Despite all the collectivity going on with expats and local Cambodians, the pressure to conform simply doesn’t feel like pressure. You slowly become culturally sensitive (or not) and observe certain norms and engage in certain practices, but in many ways, that’s where it ends. From the junkie and the sex addict, to the God-driven missionary and development-driven NGO worker, to those remarkable unemployed folks who somehow manage to coast along in a deep sea of whatever it is they have, there is a place for you here. And nobody’s going to pop your bubble unless you want it to be popped. One of my first friends here enjoyed a lifestyle of extreme bliss and absolutely no employment for four or five months. Another friend was unemployed for almost a year. I’ve met travelers who have decided to just “stop by” for a few months without any larger ambition to contribute as an employee to any organization, or even as a freelancer. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who are so driven by work (I’m guilty of this) that they have multiple jobs, and also provide consulting, and also volunteer and host events and activities, and can’t-stop-moving. There are those that come here during their retirement. There are those who are escaping something from where they came. There are those who are young and are looking for adventure and room to grow. There are those who are raising families out here. There are those that came for Cambodian love. There are those who have no idea what they’re doing. The fantastic elements of Cambodia is that it’s a land of personal opportunity.

What do you want to do? She asked.

All I know is I want to keep talking to you.

She looked at me like she’d heard it once before.

I found love in Cambodia. I told myself I wasn’t going to look for it, so perhaps it found me. On numerous occasions. Love transcended my greatest desires to stay focused on myself. And in staying focused on myself it was obvious that love was unavoidable. Love has come in such varieties here. People who have loved me, people I have directed love toward. An intricate exchange, a fantastic gaze. There was the first friend I slowly knew would forever be more than that to me. There was the gang of friends I would never stop thinking about, would attempt to spend time with every day. There was the woman I knew only briefly, who I created the perfect art piece with, only to watch it be destroyed, because we did not deserve it. There was the friend I abandoned after learning to know and love for so long. There was the other friend who somehow managed to love me and then immediately stop. There were the people I loved like family. There were the people I loved like lovers. There were the people who were best friends. There were the people who came and went but always branded an image.

She countered my doubt with another message.

“And be at peace with loneliness.”

My glass as empty as the sky, my lips spread open in a smile.

I have always been lonely and have regularly felt alone despite the countless faces and voices and communities existing to support me wherever I have been. I have always been maniacal, the door of my sanity slightly ajar. It’s been that way in Cambodia, too, though in many ways, Cambodia life has been like university life. It has been a source of personal growth and education, one concentrated. In many ways, the people that entered and left my life were all in similar positions in life, similar open positions that allowed them to ask big questions and find answers, great and small, in response. I spent the first half of my time in Cambodia living alone in an apartment on the ground floor of a quasi-residential apartment in a shady street in Phnom Penh’s south end. I then moved into an apartment, also in the south end, to the west, near Toul Tom Pong, or Russian Market. I lived with two wonderful roommates, a Belgian working for an NGO, and a Polish freelancer. In many ways, I saw my own loneliness confronted on a regular basis by invitations from friends and loved ones who were always around the corner, always excited about life, always willing to do things. In many ways, the promptness of social living has been different than any other space I’ve lived in, but perhaps it’s because I’ve finally started letting the friends come before me.

“Will you come back?”

I really want to. There was a cool breeze tickling my arms.

“You’re going to be missed by a lot of people.”

My life has been a life of movement. I have put significant thought into “settling down” since I came here, despite how a life in Cambodia often provides the conflicting viewpoints of people settling and people in flux (as does anywhere else, of course, but particularly so here, with significantly strict cultural norms and the entering and exiting of so many individuals from foreign lands). I have thought of what settling can do for me. What can happen if you downsize certain elements of your life? What can happen if you focus, put greater attention into certain ideas, values, systems, projects, works? What can happen if you slow down a bit? Will that help life? Yesterday I watched five movies and packed my bags, getting rid of a lot of my things, preparing a lot of clothes to be donated. It felt relaxing to invest so much time into being an observer, rather than a creator, the “active principle” in the situation. Some of my favorite moments in Cambodia have been those on a beach, or at a pool, where every other activity in life vanished. Other favorite moments were on the dance floor, where I could transform into the crazed dancing dude I am. Our most highly-prized inner natures are sometimes those that we don’t talk about that often, those we reserve for the unique experiences that inspire them.

Difference comes in many forms.

Count the types of mangos grown.

Beggars and the elite dance on the same streets.

Surprisingly, I thought a lot about American poverty while I was in Cambodia. Poverty and class struggles and economic struggles exist everywhere, of course. In many ways, my time here has been similar to my time in Philadelphia; however, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I can make a difference, how my actions help (and don’t) and I have lived with societal difficulties much easier here. I don’t love the struggle here. I don’t want it to continue to exist. But I respect the history and the structures that need to be changed and I believe in the many people who want change here. It will come in due time. As you come to know more people in Cambodia, and you realize that many people have found joy in their life despite their shitty situations, a certain degree of respect for the culture grows. Perhaps I have developed a complex here since I have access to those who are well-to-do and those that are in poverty. Obviously I have the privilege to move around and see the world from many angles, like a god, but perhaps having such mobility has also allowed me to learn and continue to be here without growing incredibly depressed and fleeing due to my inability to cope (that’s what happened in Philly). One of my first friends here, a tuk tuk driver, who invited me to see his world from the inside. Most days he only made enough to survive, and could only save $1/day. Another one of my first friends here owns a car and had a job that will most likely allow him to enter in and continue to live as a member of the “emerging middle class.” I have met teachers making hardly a living wage. I have met wildly successful business owners. I have met farmers. I have met garment factory workers. I have met poets and song writers. I have met visual artists. I have met barristas. I have met advocates and political champions. Everyone has expressed to me their critiques of Cambodia, and everyone has expressed a gratefulness for life here. I have enjoyed investigating happiness.

Your favorite pair of pants rip, so go put on new pants.

Your party’s playlist ends so download some new music.

Your life chapter ends so you go write the next one.

When I think about Cambodia and me, I think about it being too short. Less than a year in a place, I’ve been arguing since I got here, is not enough time. I’m grateful I had the chance to at least experience 8.5 months here. The experiences I’ve witnessed and the knowledge I’ve gained have incomparable to other chapters in my life. I am going to truly miss the life I’ve had in Cambodia, a lot, and I know I will return, but for now, this is simply the trajectory I have to live with. How one deals with transience, movement from one space to the next, is a difficult concept. At 28 years old, I haven’t the slightest clue about movement, except that I know I’ve done it before and that it was successful and fine and it will most likely be successful and fine again. People I’ve met who have lived around the world say that while it’s always hard moving, it’s also something that gets easier. I hope so. Travel and transience have always been inspiring and have provided significant insight into myself, and I can’t see myself stopping my movement around the world, even if I run out of money, or I get my limbs blown off. I’ll find a way. But moving from Cambodia back to the USA, which is so, so different will be a challenge. In many ways, I hope to retain as much as I’ve gained from Cambodia as I can once back to the Empire, and yet, I believe that a lot of the beliefs I’ve fostered here have been directly linked to the cultural contexts here, and thus I will need to really think about what life out here has been, and how I can translate my life here into the new contexts. Reverse culture shock will most likely shock me, as well, so I will plan on reflecting on that, too. But for the next 36 hours I have in the country, it will be about cherishing what I’ve already felt and experienced. Let the re-appropriation happen later.

More comments and reflections this afternoon and tomorrow. You can also check out my reflections on library work in Cambodia here.